Tacitus and Bracciolini. The Annals Forged in the XVth Century

by John Wilson Ross

III. Another blunder is made by Bracciolini with regard to the Italians and Romans, whom he looks upon as blood relations, fellow countrymen, and possessors of a common capital in the City of Rome. The Italians were not of the same descent as the Romans; and when they were all brought under subjection to Rome in the first half of the third century before the Christian aera, they beheld themselves inhabitants of towns, some of which were "municipia", (having their own laws and magistracy, enjoying the privilege of voting in the comitia and soliciting for public offices in Rome), others "coloni," (conquered places ruled over by poor Romans sent to keep the inhabitants in subjection, having the jus Romanum, Latinum or Italicum, and ceasing to be citizens of Rome); but in either set of towns the freedom and the sacred rites, the laws of race and of government, the oaths and the guardianship of the Romans did not prevail; in fact, the Italians had not the private rights of the Romans, and, therefore, in the language of Livy, "they were not Roman citizens":—"non eos esse cives Romanos" (XXXIV. 42). Even the privileges they enjoyed, such as immunity from the tribute raised in the Roman provinces, they participated with other people, to whom the privilege had been accorded at various periods;—for example,—the inhabitants of Laodicaea in Syria and of Beyroot in Phoenicia in the time of Augustus;—of Tyre in the time of Severus;—of Antioch and the colony of Emissa in Upper Syria in the time of Antonine, and of the colonies in Mauritania in the time of Titus. Tacitus, therefore, as a Roman citizen, could not, by any possibility, have spoken of Rome being the "capital" of Italy, and the Italians and Romans being people of the "same blood," as the author of the Annals does when he writes: "non adeo aegram Italiam ut senatum suppeditare urbi suae nequiret; suffecisse olim indigenas consanguineis populis" (XI. 23).

Nobody can understand those last five words; they have not been understood by the editors, from Justus Lipsius and John Frederic Gronovius to Ernesti and Heinsius: they are capable of more than one interpretation on account of the brevity and obscurity of the expression: I take it that Bracciolini meant to imply that "in the ancient days the natives of Italy were quite on a par with their 'brethren' in Rome," referring to the time when Romans, Latins, Etruscans and Sabines stood on the same level; and in order to make out that Italians are still in the same position, he adds: "there is no regretting what was anciently done in the State," "nec poenitere veteris reipublicae."

An Italian of the fifteenth century, and a Florentine like Bracciolini, was glad to think, and proud to say, nay, ready to believe, and to perpetuate the belief, that Italy and Rome were identical, and the people consanguineous. We see how that pleasing delusion is still cherished fondly by the living countrymen of Bracciolini: General Garibaldi, to wit, as well as the late Joseph Mazzini, always looked upon the City of Rome as the "natural" capital of the Kingdom of Italy; and we can easily believe, with what joy, pride, and confidence in its veracity the gallant general or the devoted patriot, or any other Italian warrior or politician, would have written, as Bracciolini wrote, the passage that we have quoted from the eleventh book of the Annals.

IV. Nor is this the only time when Bracciolini does not maintain the character he assumes of an ancient Roman. Narcissus, addressing Claudius in the eleventh book of the Annals says: "he did not now mean to charge him"—that is, Silius, "with adulteries": "nec nunc adulteria objecturum" (XI. 30). The language used seems to be very good language. A Roman historian, though, would have written, "nec tunc": he could not have fallen into the error of failing to define time in reference to himself when ascribing words to persons, any more than he could have failed to vary the grammar to the accusative and infinitive. This elementary principle in Latin composition is known, (as Lord Macaulay would have said,) "to every schoolboy." It was, certainly, well known to such an accomplished "grammaticus" as Bracciolini; and for the very simple reason that he adheres to it on all other occasions. His neglect of it in this instance is as strong a proof as any that can be advanced, of his forgery: it makes that forgery the more obvious, his slip not being accidental, but intentional: it is a deliberate violation of a rule that must never be infringed; but as a countryman will sometimes run after a jack-a-lantern, till running after it he finds himself in a burying-ground, so Bracciolini suffered himself to be misled by his literary will-o'-the wisp,—alliteration: therefore he preferred writing "_n_ec _n_unc," instead of "nec tunc;" he therefore did that which was fatal to the work that he wanted to palm off upon the world as the composition of a Roman, because a Roman would not have done this, because he could not have done it. Definition of time in reference to himself was a necessity of expression; he could not have sacrificed it for alliteration or any other trick of composition, because he would not have dreamt of changing the time in ascribing words to persons. A modern, on the other hand, would think that a mere trifle; left to himself, he would prefer it; he would also know that his readers, being moderns like himself, would very much admire his composition for the alliteration, whilst finding definition of time in reference to the position of the speaker, much more agreeable to their ears, from their being accustomed to native historians who wrote in the vernacular so defining time in all passages of the kind spontaneously, without art or affectation, and not, as the ancient Romans, stiffly adopting the harsh, unnatural fashion of defining it in reference to the position of the writer.

V. Our word "box" (apart from three technical meanings, one in botany, and two in mechanics), has six different significations for things that have nothing in common with each other;—"a slap on the chaps"; "a coffer or case for holding any materials"; "seats in a theatre"; "a Christmas present"; "the case for the mariner's compass," and "the seat on a coach for the driver." The Roman word, too, "locus," has just the same half-dozen meanings for things as unconnected;—"a passage"; "a country"; "an argument"; "a place"; "a sentence," and "a seat." In five instances "box" is a primitive noun; when it means "a blow on the cheek with the palm of the hand," it is a verbal substantive. Exactly the same number of curiosities distinguished "locus." In five instances it was masculine; when it signified "a seat in a theatre" it was neuter; this was familiar to every Roman with a lettered education: unfortunately it slipped the memory of Bracciolini when he wrote: An. XV. 32: "equitum Romanorum locos sedilibus plebis anteposuit apud Circum." Tacitus would have written "loca."

VI. This brings me again to consider the Latin of Tacitus; no reasonable objection can be found with it; severely captious critics who carp at trifles, and look at language microscopically, point out errors; but they are not so great as the mistakes sometimes made by Cicero and Caesar, Sallust and Livy. As a specimen of the objections we may give the following: a critic has been bold enough to say that in the phrase "refractis palatiis foribus, ruere intus" (Hist. I. 35), Tacitus uses the adverb for in a place instead of the adverb for to a place. "Intus" means "into" or "within," just as well as "in," as may be seen from numerous instances in Cicero, Caesar, Ovid, Plautus, and other writers of inferior reputation in prose and poetry. The phrase then is: "having broken open the palace doors, to rush within." Where is the mistake?

Another objection raised is that Tacitus wrongly writes "quantum" as the corresponding adverb to "tanto," "_quantum_que hebes ad sustinendum laborem miles, tanto ad discordias promptior" (Hist. II. 99). It was a common custom among the Romans to use "quantum," if they preferred it, to "quanto," and to follow it with "tanto": at any rate it occurs in Livy twice, if not oftener: quantum augebatur, tanto majore (V. 10);—quantum laxaverat, tanto magis (XXXII. 5). The objections to the grammar of Tacitus are, as a rule, all on a par with these two; it is not, however, without some pleasurable feeling that one comes across charges made against him of using incorrect forms of speech, were it only from perceiving how extremely happy the fault-finders seem to be in having such an opportunity of gratifying their natural malice.

VII. Vossius, the Canon of Canterbury in the seventeenth century, adopts an entirely different tone in his agreeable treatise on the Roman historians—"De Historicis Latinis." Commenting on the statement made by Alciati and Emilio Ferretti that Tacitus wrote bad Latin, he bursts into an exclamation that may be considered rather uncourteous when applied to His Eminence a Cardinal and to an eminent Jurisconsult, that they were both silly and absurd: "they say," exclaims Gerardus Johannes, "that he did not write Latin properly: how silly is this! how absurd!"—"aiunt, eum non Latine satis scribere: quam, hoc insubidum! quam insulsum!" (I. 30). Perhaps Vossius was of opinion that if Tacitus wrote incorrectly, it must be upon the principle alleged by Quintilian that "one kind of expression is grammatical, another kind Latin," "aliud esse grammatice, aliud Latine loqui" (I. 16) after the accommodating fashion of that kind gentleman of etymology and syntax, Valerius Probus, who in Aulus Gellius (XIII. 20. 1), said "has urb_e_s" or "has urb_is_" was the more correct according to metrical convenience when writing verses, or sonorous utterance when delivering a set oration, which (without being Romans), we can easily understand, when some of our poets rhyme "clear" to "idea," and a Clerkenwell Green orator prefers "obstropalous" to "obstreperous." On some such grounds alone can excuse be found for some anomalous expressions in the Annals; they are irreconcilable to the common rules of grammar; and what may seem strange to the reader, though to me it is quite natural, the very same improprieties that occur in the Annals of words and phrases not according with the established principles of writing occur also in the acknowledged works of Bracciolini.

VIII. (a). When the Romans used the disjunctive particle, "nec," in the first branch of a negative sentence, the same word (or its equivalent "neque,") was used in the subsequent branch of the proposition. To couple "aut" with "nec" was a wrong correlative. The rule was so absolute that I know but of one Roman writer who infringed it; and that was because he was a poet,—Ovid:

"Nec piget, aut unquam stulte elegisse videbor." Her. XVI. 167.